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Elections result in run-off for two tickets

Sonia Rao | Tuesday, February 13, 2007

The student body election results were revealed Monday night, but with no ticket obtaining a majority of the votes, frontrunners Brown-Braun and Smith-Weiss will proceed to a run-off election on Thursday.

Judicial Council president Liz Kozlow announced that Liz Brown and Maris Braun received 45.8 percent of student votes and Danny Smith and Ashley Weiss received 38.3 percent. Since candidates need to obtain a “50 percent plus one majority,” the top two tickets will compete in a run-off for the position on Thursday, Kozlow said.

With what she described as two strong platforms, Brown said she was not surprised by the results.

“I think Maris and I were expecting a run-off,” she said. “We had some pretty strong tickets.”

A total of 3,492 votes were cast Monday, which was not quite up to Kozlow’s expectations.

“I think we were hoping [voting turnout] would be a little bit higher,” she said.

Allowing students to vote online and at various voting stations around campus, however, was an effective way to encourage participation, she said.

“We tried hard to encourage voting,” Kozlow said. “We had some great results.”

The narrow majority of voters were freshmen. One thousand eighty-nine freshmen, 1,066 sophomores, 803 juniors, 533 seniors, and one fifth-year cast their ballots.

Each of the candidates received a comprehensive breakdown of votes by class and by dorm, which could be helpful in determining where candidates are lacking support, Brown said.

“Dorm breakdowns are very useful for us … we will be using that in the next 48 hours left in the campaign and use those numbers to our advantage,” she said.

The run-off debate will take place at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday in the main lounge of LaFortune. The debate will have the same format as the one held last Wednesday, but the focus may shift to “more specific topics” in addition to a re-evaluation of each ticket’s platform, Kozlow said. The run-off election is Thursday, with the same technology access as Monday’s elections.

Like election protocol, the candidates seem to be sticking to the status quo when it comes to run-off strategy.

“I think we’re just going to keep doing what we’re doing,” Brown said. “I think we have a lot to offer the student body.”